Rags And Bones

(album: Northern Lights - Southern Cross - 1975)

Catch a taxi to the fountainhead

Blinking neon penny arcade
A young Caruso on the fire escape
Painted face ladies on parade
The newsboy on the corner
Singing out headlines
And a fiddler selling pencils
The sign reads: Help the blind

Coming up the lane calling
Working while the rain's falling
Ragman, your song of the street
Keeps haunting my memory

Music in the air
I hear it ev'rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Hear them, how they talk to me

Trolley car rings out the morning
Whistle blows at noon
A cat fight breaks open the night
While watch dogs bay at the moon
A preacher on an orange crate
With a Salvation Army Band
And clicking along the cobbled stones
That's the sound of the ice-cream man

Coming up the lane calling
Working while the rain's falling
Ragman, your song of the street
Keeps haunting my memory
Music in the air
I hear it ev'rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Hear them, how they talk to me

The organ grinder and his monkey
Still walking the same old beat
The shoe-shine boy slapping leather
He puts the rhythm in your feet
Strolling by the churchyard
List'ning to the Sunday choir
With voices rising to the heavens
Like sirens screaming to a fire

Coming up to the lane calling
Working while the rain's falling
Ragman, your song of the street
Keeps haunting my memory
Music in the air
I hear it ev'rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Play them one more time for me